Abstract (eng)
This master’s thesis analyses the implications of trimedial working for the quality of journalism in public-service broadcasting. For the recent years, the catchword “trimedia” has been mirroring the transformation of journalistic working in Europe. Technological innovations and economic pressure have led to a convergence of editorial offices into trimedial newsrooms, where journalists of different platforms are strategically cooperating and sharing content. The present study was prompted by the question of how these new production routines are affecting the quality of journalism, which to guarantee is the main mission of public broadcasting service.
The object of research has been Radio Bremen, the smallest member of the consortium of German public broadcasting organizations, ARD. Due to the fact that trimedial working was already implemented at Radio Bremen in 2007, the broadcasting station is taking a pioneering role within the German speaking region.
The metatheoretical frame of the present paper is based on the system theory, founded by Niklas Luhmann in 1984. It is one of the major concepts used to examine journalism as a social system. Nevertheless, quality of journalism can only be evaluated by considering equally the dimension of journalistic action. Thus, approaches that aim at combing the system theory with action theories are added in order to complete the theoretical framework of this thesis.
Finally, scientific approaches which try to systematize journalistic quality are paving the way for an empirical evaluation. On the basis of those communication theories a set of criteria has been identified to examine the quality of trimedial journalism: resources, diversity, currentness, accuracy, research and professionalism.
To analyse the impact of trimedial working on those selected criteria, eleven guided interviews with journalists working at Radio Bremen were conducted. Further data has been gathered by a participation observation. As interviews are commonly used to evaluate opinions, attitudes and expectations, while observations are rather suitable for describing processes and actions, the combination of both methods seemed to be a suitable approach. Interpretative techniques were finally used to evaluate the collected data.
The results of the study suggest that the quality of reporting at Radio Bremen is in the first place negatively influenced by technical problems. The content management system used for cross-medial production has originally been designed for radio and was subsequently adapted for TV production resulting in serious problems. Moreover, the way in which the trimedial workflow is conceptualized may increase the frequency of errors. As scripts are taken from radio and TV and rephrased for the website, mistakes are more likely to emerge, false information is more easily spread through all channels and stylistic specifics of online reporting are not being sufficiently addressed at Radio Bremen. In addition, the work environment of newsrooms seems to have a negative impact on the quality of reporting: journalists feel disturbed by the high level of noise. Finally, (foremost older) journalists do not really want to change their work habits. Finally, lack in motivation of journalists to work in a tri-medial setting can lead to additional negative impacts on the quality of journalism.
Nevertheless, tri-medial workflows don’t seem to have an impact on the variety of perspectives and currentness of reporting. Equally, planning and managing topics for three media does not affect the variety of opinion. On the variety of topics addressed, tri-medial working may even have an enriching effect. Sharing ideas, content and sources between different platforms is perceived as enormously rewarding by the journalists. Positive effects were further noted on the exchange of information between different editorial offices. Finally, Radio Bremen is also successfully implementing crossmedial integration and linkages.